Education

Research Interests

I use experimental, observational and quantitative modeling approaches to investigate population, community and ecosystem processes across local and regional scales. In particular, my research focuses on i) impacts of global change on forest composition, succession and species distributions, ii) fundamental mechanisms that maintain species coexistence, iii) feedbacks between altered species composition and biogeochemical processes, iv) ecosystem consequences of geographical genetic variability in plant responses to environmental change, and v) potential plant and soil feedbacks to the climate system. These diverse approaches reflect my desire to address fundamental ecological questions that are relevant to the environmental challenges we face today and will undoubtedly deal with in the future. My research involves asking basic questions motivated by ecological theory, and then integrating empirical data with quantitative analyses to forecast responses of plant populations, communities and ecosystems to changing environments. My interests are connected by the pervasive goal of understanding fundamental relationships between ecological processes, how these relationships vary over space and time, and the effects of environmental change on individual levels of biocomplexity as well as on systems in their entirety. I have conducted research in southern (Duke Forest; Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory; Pisgah, Nantahala, Kisatchie and Apalachicola National Forests) and northeastern (Harvard Forest) temperate forest systems, and have also worked in southern Appalachian seepage bogs, high-elevation spruce-fir forests, fire-dependent longleaf pine savannas, and Swedish arctic shrub communities. I look forward to continuing research in forests and other ecosystems, and in expanding my current population, community and biogeochemical work in ecosystems of the United States and abroad.

Research Projects

2007 DOE - soil and air warming at Harvard Forest (MA) and Duke Forest (NC) to detmine how eastern US forests will look and function in the next century & beyond ($2.2 million)

2007 UGA - soil and air warming at Whitehall Forest (GA) (to expand the above research into the Deep South)

1997 DOE - terrestrial ecosystem responses to global change ($290 K)

Honors and Awards

2002 Buell Award (Ecological Society of America's Award for the best student presentation)

Jacqueline Mohan

I am fascinated by impacts of past and future global changes on plant population dynamics, community interactions and ecosystem functioning. I continue to study climate feedbacks mediated by vegetation and soils, and ecological consequences of geographical genetic variation in plant responses to changing environmental factors.